Images: Tim Romano. Words: Chad Shmukler.

If you ask me, I'll tell you that Tim Romano is a modern day photographer made for an earlier time; a time before Photoshop, clarity sliders and prepackaged image filters. In a world now awash with imagery that often seems geared to appeal to our basest instincts or to maximizing "time on device"—by triggering an instant, but fleeting dopamine rush that sends us endlessly scrolling through our Instagram feeds in search of the next cheap high—Tim's work often seems plucked from a bygone era. Regardless of the diverse subjects that his lens captures—the way late season sunlight illuminates a hallway, the tenderness of moments at his family's camp in the Adirondacks, stacks of beehives outside Fort Smith, Montana—Tim consistently finds a way to convey the beauty in simple things. Perhaps most importantly, he does so by relying on old fashioned tools like composition, light and perspective instead of overwrought post processing and manipulation. In fact, it's Tim's considerable restraint in the "darkroom" that lets the loveliness of real, everyday things take center stage in his photos.

So who better then than Romano to take on the passion project of lifelong Texan Michael J. Medrano, which eventually took form as Stilt Houses of Texas, to document the rustic simplicity of the people, communities and stilt houses that line the Texas coast?